Power Structure Analysis

One of the seven units of the 1964 Mississippi Freedom School Curriculum was called Introducing the Power Structure.

Duane Campbell's analysis, following his posting of the Sac Bee article about new teachers, is an excellent description of how the state legislature is operating - using education policy as a case study.

Thursday, September 06, 2007
The California Legislature usually gets it wrong on public education

Chicago Popular Education Conference Website

The site is now an archive of the conference containing photos, audio, session notes and handouts, the conference program and comments from participants, including positive comments about individual workshops.

July 28th SF Freedom School Session

RE: Awele Makeba (awele.com) . Here's a letter to Awele from one of the SFFS participants in response to her experience of Awele's workshop at the SF Freedom School on July 28.

Dear Awele,
It was such a pleasure to meet you yesterday, and to participate in your amazing performance. You so deftly wove together history, performance, pedagogy, and critical thinking about social justice, all in a way that truly made the Civil Rights movement come alive. Your performance thoroughly captivated our audience of adults, but I could also see how it would be just as riveting and energizing for elementary, secondary, and also college students. I was impressed with how well-researched your performance was, and how it engaged the audience on so many levels: we learned not only about Claudette Colvin and the rich context of the Montgomery Bus Boycotts; we also learned about historical thinking, about performance pedagogy (teachers in the audience got many great ideas), and you pushed us to ponder the "big questions" as well (such as ... Who am I? What does it mean to be an American? How does our misconception of history make us blind to the present? What can one person do to make a difference? What is my role in fostering social change?). Thank you for the inspiration.

Free Minds, Free People

this is a work in progress!!!


Chicago Conference on Popular Education, June 21-24, at Little Village High School

Sylvia, Sande and I went to this conference to participate on a panel on freedom schools: then and now. Below are some of my notes from the conference:

Friday Morning

Plenary: A brief history of Little Village High School, located in the Southwest part of town (mixed industrial/residential). School board promised a school in this area, then reneged on their promise. So at "Camp Cesar Chavez," the community rallied for a 19 day hunger strike and forced the city to build a beautiful new building divided into four small schools: World Languages; Social Justice; Multicultural Arts; and Math, Science and Technology.

We then saw a 5 minute video about the creation of the Chicago Freedom School which is being launched this summer. After the video, three youth spoke of what CFS was all about:
• to collaborate with like-minded people (social justice)
• build youth leadership
• establish a sense of community and urgency for action
• a place where youth can learn in a holistic approach what they will actually use: "how many times have you sat in a classroom and said, 'we are never going to use this'!!!!"

Charles Payne spoke briefly: This conference is about what we have in common
--- we are tired of underfunded schools that hold young people in contempt

black response to racist violence

The Black Response to Racist Violence (1870-1970): Pacifist, Tactical Nonviolence and Armed Self-Defense

On May 12, the SF Freedom School and United Playaz sponsored a performance by Awele Makeba about this topic. This was a fundraiser for the SF Freedom School--students were invited guests. We had a good crowd, somewhere between 50 and 60 people, a crowd that was interracial and intergenerational.

Before the performance began, a member of the Brown Berets from Watsonville introduced herself and explained the Brown Beret's mission and 3 members of the United Playaz also explained what UP was all about. Both seem to have a similar mission of creating a community for youth to help them get through school. Providing structure and guidance to youth through these organizations has helped members to overcome the many obstacles in their way to graduation, jobs or college.

Awele brought three other actors with her from BayArt (Alfonso "Gift" Harris, Michael Lange, James Brooks)


Awele began the performance by reading the names of those lynched in 1893 as recorded by Ida B. Wells in A Red Record (1895). Then Awele asked the audience to provide the names of people they knew who had died from violence. James Brooks read a passage by Bayard Rustin, From Protest to Politics: The Future of the Civil Rights Movement,
and one by Martin Luther King, Jr. that described the philosophy and strategy of nonviolent direct action. Awele read from an interview with
Diane Nash about her participation in the Nashville Sit-Ins and Boycott of 1960.

Michael Lange read John Lewis’ speech from the 1963 March on Washington—-the original one--that Lewis was compelled to modify for actual delivery. “Gift” Harris read from Malcolm X’s The Ballot or the Bullet. At this point the performance had begun to run over the time limit and the planned readings from Robert Williams, the Deacons for Defense and Black Panthers were skipped over to read notes and transcript from Bastards of the Party, an HBO documentary about the roots of gang violence in Los Angeles today.

The original idea of the evening was to have short performances of the historical record of the black response to racist violence that explored the tension among three difference responses: pacifism, tactical nonviolence and armed resistance. The performance was to be followed by an hour discussion of the topic as illustrated by the history and how it related to present day issues of racism and violence.

While the original plan was not executed, the evening was very successful. During the 15 minute discussion that followed the performances, one of the members of United Playaz talked about the importance of faith in developing a culture of nonviolent response to the violence in their communities, wondering why her religion is not in the schools since that was a crucial element in her ability to be positive and constructive in her life. Brook responded sympathetically and asked the question about how that would work given that not everyone subscribes to the same religious beliefs. Other comments included remembering the impact of the death of Emmett Till, the sense of people not knowing how to fight back in nonviolent ways today, and how corrupt the dominant culture is (that day a luxury hotel for cats and dogs had its grand opening while across the street homeless people slept in doorways)

Here's what Matier and Ross had to say about the hotel:

Wag the dog: San Francisco really is going to the dogs -- and cats as well -- judging by this weekend's grand opening of the Wag Hotel, an upscale South of Market pet palace that features rooms complete with plasma TVs, an indoor swimming pool and -- we kid you not -- doggie massages and blueberry facials.

The 239-room hotel on 14th Street, between Harrison and Folsom streets, is the Wag's second -- the first opened in Sacramento in 2004. Its owners are planning several more "modern and sophisticated hotels designed exclusively for the urban dog and cat.''

To wit:

-- Luxury suites -- with "plush raised bedding,'' sofas, rugs, wall paintings and flat-screen TVs featuring doggie-themed cartoons and Animal Planet programming. Plus two meals a day. Prices range from $40 to $85 a night.

-- Two-story cat condos -- with private bathrooms and a view of a freshwater aquarium -- for $20 a night, complete with around-the-clock-staffing.

-- Individual spa services, including pet massages at $25 for a 25-minute session.

Sing don't Chant

Saturday morning I participated in a picket and distributed leaflets against NCLB in front of the Moscone Center. Phil Brown from Eliminate NCLB, Phil Kovacs from Educator Roundtable,
Joe Lucido from Fresno and Craig Gordon from OEA came with others from their organizations and joined SF's Teachers 4 Social Justice Saturday morning, April 14th to picket and hand out literature to those attending the National School Board Association's annual meeting. (Thanks to Karen and Dawn for taking the lead in organizing the SF folks -- and kudos to Eric and Mark for coming out and joining us.)
The groups from Fresno and King's County/Tulare had gotten up at some god awful time in the morning (5 AM?) to get on buses and arrive at 7:30 AM. Phil Brown guessed that they handed out 7500 flyers. Dawn and I arrived at 10 AM and handed out our flyers. We were shooed away from the doors of the Center and put on a traffic island where we joined those walking in a oval who were chanting. I immediately thought of one of Bruce Hartford's "seven key concepts of nonviolent direct action"-- chanting is to singing as a mouse is to an elephant. I told Marsha Feinland of the Peace and Freedom Party that we had to sing and not chant. (Singing can be heard farther away, the words carry farther; you can sing a lot longer than you can chant; singing invites people in while chanting pushes people away; lyrics of songs tend to be much more informative than chants, etc.). So on the spot, Marsha and I tried to come up with a song. We took the tune of "Row, Row, Row your Boat" and sang,

Test, test, test the kids
send them down the stream
N--, C---, L---, B---
makes you want to scream

Not the greatest attempt, but we tried. The problem is picking a tune that everyone knows and likes but is not complicated, lends itself to lyrics where a few new lyrics can easily be plugged in. This was my small attempt to take the lessons learned in the SF Freedom School and apply them today.

later that day I thought of another verse to Row, Row, Row you Boat:

test, test, test some more
until they bubble in
N--, C---, L---, B---
Don't believe the spin

Then to the tune of When the Saints Come Marching In:

Oh when the schools
stop giving tests
Oh when the schools stop giving tests,
I want to be in that classroom,
when the schools stop giving tests

Oh when the schools
get fully funded (get needed funds?)
oh when the schools get fully funded
I want to be in that classroom
when the schools get fully funded

CONFERENCES!

The last two weeks have been pretty much a blur of activity for me. On March 24th, I was part of a roundtable discussion at the 7th Annual Cesar Chavez Conference on Critical Thinking and Education put on by Rog Lucido and the Kremen School of Education at Fresno State

Then I attended the Frontline Conference (4th annual) at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium (SF) on Thursday, March 29th put on by Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice. I went to this because Rudy Corpuz of United Playaz told me about it.

Then last Friday and Saturday (March 30 and 31), I went down to San Jose to be part of a panel presentation at the California Council of Teacher Educators annual conference.

The Fresno conference was frustrating because everyone was arguing about what "we" should be doing to stop high-stakes testing with very little understanding, or rather, analysis of how one goes about organizing to leverage people power. I told everyone they all have to rent Monty Python's Life of Brian before they go to another "strategy session." Yet, there was progress being made in that people were engaging in the process of consensus building (in spite of the egos and wanting to be right).

The Frontline Conference was very impressive. The panelists at the plenary presentation and in the workshops were people who have personal experience being in gangs, in prison, or know family members who have been victims of violence. The panelists were addressing an audience made of of the "experts" -- the legislative analysts, social services personnel and educators who usually assert themselves as experts in that they are the "professionals."

The real experts, those who have been directly involved in gangs or victims of gangs, had turned the tables and were instructing the government officials on what was needed for members of the community, themselves, to deal constructively with the problems they faced. Among the suggestions were: more job training; youth services (e.g., park and rec programs, organized sports); and transitional housing. Much more of these things than presently existed. Those representing the Healing Circle (Mattie Scott, co-founder pictured here) were particularly eloquent about how "hurt people hurt people" so there was a tremendous need for safe places to heal the hurts caused by violence and neglect and that it all came down to lack of funding coupled with the community not taking responsibility to heal itself. (The Healing Circle meets every other Thursday at 7 - 9 PM at the Paradise Baptist Churh, 2nd floor, 2595 San Jose Avenue in San Francisco.)

The best thing the conference accomplished, it seemed, was providing (1) a place for people to network with each other, building the kinds of horizontal relationships out of which movements emerge; and (2) leadership development as those who are usually told they have to shape up were the ones telling the government and social agencies that they had to step up to the plate. The panelists got good experience in articulating their positions.

My only quibble with the conference was that, while the panelists were explaining and analysing the cause/effects of the violence in their communities, there seemed to be the expectation that all that was needed for services to improve was to get the word out to legislators and CBOs (community based organizations). Hopefully, there is a good understanding that the next step is for all involved to use their relationships with each other to begin to build the infrastructure of a movement that will leverage people power and force the city and state to respond with real programs and not just a lot of promises.

In San Jose, CCTE was struggling with its own problems of how to act and not just talk. High stakes testing has come to the teacher credential programs in the form of Teacher Performance Assessments (TPA)-- standardized and narrowing of the gatekeeping process (that has historically kept most people of color out of the teaching profession -- now it promises to get even worse). The Frontline panelists called for more teachers that "looked like them" but the TPA's will make sure even fewer teachers "look like them" in the future. Duane Campbell is organizing teacher educators to delay (for a year) TPA's from becoming mandatory, which can buy some time for real organizing to take place. Yet no specific plan for such organizing was established last weekend. There is no consensus as to what the problem is -- is it only about deprofessionalization of teachers? if so, then make common cause with doctors, nurses, firefighters and police. If it is about social injustice, maintaining the school system as a sorting and socializing mechanism for the benefit of increasing the profits of global capitalism, then we need a social movement, which will require teachers and parents and students to organize together. And the first step in that direction is building relationships across class and racial lines -- no small task!

13th Annual Multicultural Education Conference at Sac State

On Saturday, I went up to Sac State to present at their annual Multi cultural conference. Sonia Nieto was the keynote speaker -- I missed her talk but arrived in time to attend Duane Campbell's . Duane did a clever thing by starting with a video of Irish immigration in the 1840s to point out that immigration is nothing new to this country, nor are the reasons (eg famine, political oppression) new. He sequed from Irish immigration to talking about how the Latino immigration issue will increasingly be in the news in the coming months



-- hence the need for teachers to teach about Cesar Chavez on March 31,session on teaching Cesar Chavez and the UFW movement.

and then proceeded to give a good grounding in how to teach about it and provided teaching resources (eg one of the issues of the Rethinking Schools magazine.


During the second session, I gave my spiel on how the 1964 Mississippi Freedom School Curriculum was an important topic for those interested in critical pedagogy since it is a study of how theory and practice interact. Only five people showed up for the session, three of them involved in Waldorf schools and focusing on arts education -- which is highly relevant to any curriculum that wants to encourage students to be agents of social change. As Myles Horton argues, movements escalate by their nature and one has to be creative and flexible to respond to those moments when it is time to escalate.

The third session, I watched a video made by Francisco Reveles of CSUS. He does a lot of anti-gang work. . His video was very good at getting students to begin to understand how to focus on getting beyond "survival to success." This is one piece of the puzzle we need to get into place (along with working for systemic change).

I felt good to be among a lot of teacher credential students (the majority of those who were attending the conference) who were interested in being political with their teaching. Kudos to those who put on the conference!!!

Charismatic Leaders

Sylvia and I went to hear Bernice Johnson Reagon speak at Stanford on Tuesday. She was fabulous. She gave a history of the civil rights movement from the point of view of song. One of the important things I learned from her talk/singing was that not all the civil rights songs were built upon hymms but some on the top 40. the youth in particular used top 40 songs, especially ray charles, substituting freedom lyrics but keeping the tune. there was a folk revival going on as well at the time. this really solved a dilemma I have been having about where is the music going to come from today? Music and Arts are so crucial to movement building -- its transformative, assuages fear, builds community. and I thought that the reason that the music worked in the sixties is because everyone went to church and knew the tunes. but the youth today don't go to church. how are freedom songs going to come out of hip hop today? Reagon's history made it clear that freedom songs could easily come out of hip hop today. the do-wop songs were never sung at mass meetings but on buses and picket lines that sncc workers filled.

She also pointed out with examples from her own history in the movemnt that those of us who are fighters will always be in the minority -- but we can bring the majority with us at certain moments. One person asked her about why she never signed with a major recording label. she said that she wanted to but wouldn't because there were too many strings attached to doing so -- they wanted to mess with their style. one company bemoaned the fact that sweet honey did fit into a category -- world music-- but that they were from the US so they couldn't market them as such -- reagon wondered tuesday night why the US doesn't consider itself part of the world!?


the next day, I met a woman who works with Bay Area Women in Black and I told her about seeing Reagon the night before. she agreed that reagon was awesome but that she was still a bit too much about herself -- "do you know the names of the other sweet honey singers?" She contrasted bernice's leadership style with that of Suzanne Phar who always brings everyone else along with her as she moves through organizing. This reminded me of Myles Horton's critique of King in chapter 10 "Charisma" of the Long Haul.

I quote from page 120: "While some of the goals of the civil rights movement were not realized, many were. But the civil rights movement as it was then cannot and should not be imitated. It was creative, and we must be creative. We must start where Martin Luther King Jr. was stopped, and move on to a more holistic world conception of the struggle for freedom and justice. The only problem I have with movements has to do with my reservations about charismatic leaders. There's something about having one that can keep democracy from working effectively. But we don't have movements without them. That's why I had no intellectual problem supporting King as a charismatic leader."

from page 126: "King....wasn't just a charismatic leader; he was many other things . . . one of the criticisms I made to him was "you are so much the powerful leader that it's hard for people who work with you to have a role they can grow into . . . from my perspective, it looked as if he and never developed anybody who could take his place after he was killed. . . . People would say, "well, what would martin have done?" and try to do the same thing. To me, this was a great weakness in the movement. . . he never did get around to really dong what he knew was needed. I think that's a very difficult thing for a charismatic leader to do. One of the things I especially like about social movements is that even though they throw up charismatic leaders, most of the people who are part of them can learn to be educators and organizers . . . there is another important thing that social movements do: they radicalize people. That is, people learn from the movement to go beyond the movement."

I love myles horton -- the long haul is an amazing book.

bernice reagon made the point last tuesday night that historians are mistaken when they don't attribute a particular policy or cultural change to a mass movement that took place many years before. movements transform people, then those people go on to make fundamental changes, the cause/effect relationship is not explicit enough for historians to pick up on.

anyway . . those are some of my thoughts

Policy, Practice, Privilege and Power

On Tuesday, February 27th, the San Francisco School Board formally adopted a specific small schools policy. This represents the culmination of over five years of organizing by teachers and parents who believe that small, autonomous schools can be the engine for creating equity and excellence in San Francisco district schools. I, too, believe this could happen, but only if some important history lessons have been or will quickly be learned by the reformers and by those who must join the movement for it to be a means to a larger end.

Lesson #1— Policy is not Practice
This lesson is aptly illustrated by the Supreme Court decision, Brown v Board, which overturned the 1896 Plessy v Ferguson precedent. In 1954, the Justices declared that separate was inherently unequal. They decided this based on five court cases that were designed to demand that black students be able to attend white schools whose facilities and curriculum materials were far superior to those of black schools. Most white school boards, so challenged, mounted effective resistance to the new law of the land, some closing their public schools rather than having integrated ones. It took an organized social movement ten years to finally break the back of segregation in the South. In other words, it took hundreds and thousands of everyday, ordinary people acting together over many years to force institutions to implement the law.

The passage of a small schools policy does not mean that the policy will be implemented. Only ongoing public pressure will allow the school board members to hold the district accountable for implementing its policy. Past district superintendents have been able to ignore board policy resolutions with impunity (e.g., Equity Impact Resolution) because the public is not organized to sustain constant scrutiny and pressure on the central office staff or even at school sites.

Lesson #2— Privilege is not Power
In 1964, The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee spearheaded a coalition of Civil Rights organizations that successfully broke the back of segregation in Mississippi and in the South—Mississippi Freedom Summer effected a crack in the “middle of the iceberg.” When middle class and poor blacks united behind a Freedom Platform in 1964 and appealed to the Democratic party to be a party of sharecroppers and maids as well as businessmen and school teachers, the Democratic leadership allowed the middle class blacks into the party but rejected the working poor. Today, Mississippi has more black elected officials than any other state in the union and blacks can look whites in the eyes without fear of being lynched. Yet, African Americans in all states, including Mississippi, are disproportionately underpaid, jobless, suffer from poor health and are disrespected.

The passage of the small schools policy does not guarantee that all or even most students in the district will be able to attend small schools or benefit in any way from the kind of pedagogy and structure that the policy promotes. Nor will it solve the financial crisis that SFUSD faces as a result of the 1978 passage of Prop 13. As schools increasingly depend on private corporate entities to supplement declining public funding, these entities will use such funding to ensure that schools continue to reproduce the status quo.

The new small schools policy could be used to leverage social justice for all students in SFUSD, but only if organizers have learned important lessons from social movement history. School equity is about more than just school reform, it’s about social reform.

black history celebration at Alice Griffith Opportunity Center

Yesterday, Sherri and I went to the Alice Griffith Opportunity Center to participate in their first annual black history celebration. SFFS was there to show a movie, we showed 25 minute excerpt from With All Deliberate Speed (focusing on the Barbara Johns story with some of the Briggs story). We were scheduled at the beginning of the program (after an opening prayer and a couple of poems by Barbara Crittle). When we started the film there were about 15 very young children and a dozen adults. after 20 minutes only 4 adults remained. we stopped the film and had a good discussion with the 4 adults. We introduced each other and Sherri pointed out later that it was a good opportunity for "people to tell their stories, that doesn't happen enough." After the movie/discussion we went back outside to hear speeches from the invited speakers, but quickly had to retreat back inside because of rain. Dwayne Jones, Gregg Fortner, Lavelle Shaw and Victoria Vander-court spoke and received awards for their contributions to the community. Victoria gave a good brief history of the bayview and Gregg talked about how federal cut backs in federal housing money had forced him to layoff over 200 employees. He and Dwayne are the only two black heads of city departments (did I get that right). In our discussion with the four movie fans, we talked about the need for jobs among bayview residents and how the elimination of support for minority employment in the city has decreased dramatically minority employment and that was a the heart of the increase in violence going on. Gregg's story about his experiences as head of the housing authority were important for everyone to hear.

Yet, the Opportunity Center is a nice new building in the middle of the housing units, perfectly placed to provide an opportunity to develop community. we (sffs) hope to return again to support freedom education and community building.

black history celebration

big day yesterday:

spoke with about 15 retired CTA teachers in Alameda in the morning. they were very fired up about fighting high stakes testing and interested in the SF Freedom Schools. Handed out a bunch of flyers. One participant asked if SFFS was a "west coast Highlander?" -- I was delighted that he made the connection!! That would be something, if we could become even a shadow of what Highlander once was.

sherri and I met with Dedria from APRI in the afternoon and plotted out the agenda for this saturday's black history celebration at the alice griffith opportunity center (2525 Griffith STreet). SFFS is responsible for showing a film from 11-12:30 (either something about the history of HIP HOP or the barbara johns's story)-- then there will be a skit, speeches, awards, poetry and PARTY at 2 PM -- food, DJ, and a jumper for kids. SFFS folks are all invited to attend. Dedria wants us to show films for her group at least once a month.

Had a terrific meeting in the evening to plot our first house party. have come up with a template for others. will send that out to all of those willing to do house parties to raise money for SFFS -- if we have enough house parties, maybe we can become a west coast highlander!!!

institutionalized racism

Sandra, Chia and I went to hear a panel on racism in oakland last night. It was at Geoffrey's Inner Circle and put on bythe Black Elected Officials and Faith Based Leaders of the East Bay, Oakland Black Caucus, The John George Democratic Club, the Wellstone Democratic Club, and the Socially Responsible Network. The four panelists wre Monique W. Morris, Director of Discrimination Research Center and author of "Too Beautiful for Words" and authors Francis Adams and Barry Sanders of "Alienable Rights: The Exclusion of African Americans in a White Man's Land, 1619-2000, and Dr. Wade Nobles, Executive Director of the Institute for the Advanced Study of Black Family Life & Culture, Inc., Psychologist and Professor of Africana Studies, San Francisco State University, and Director, Center for Applied Cultural Studies and Educational Achievement.

The DRC website has several publications you can download that identify clearly how racism is institutionalized today. Adams's and Sander's history of racism was a bit depressing; Sanders was a very good speaker (and brief) and Nobles was eloquent on how pathological white supremacy is. The only suggestion last night on how to attack institutionalized racism was to learn african wisdoms -- a necessary but not, by a long shot, necessary variable.

In going to the DRC website and its links I was once again confronted with a very fancy and well funded non profit organization that employs very smart people who are devoted to studying the problem. When will we stop studying and attacking the problem? the non profits are good at research and policy suggestions, but where is the community organizing that will really make the needed changes? Where is the direct action piece to the puzzle?

a march is not a movement

read yesterday about march 17th march on washington to protest iraq war and thought about how a "march is not a movement". had lunch yesterday with a friend and talked about how the anti vietnam war MOVEMENT came out of the civil rights struggle. Many (a critical mass) of the anti war movement organizers PARTICIPATED in the civil rights movement thus LEARNING BY DOING how to organize a movement. I really feel that people today don't understand what it takes to create a movement. For example, nonviolent resistance (NVR) training and STRATEGIZING -- where is that happening? people today aren't understanding that one of the most important aspects, or the point of NVR, is to provoke the power structure to reveal itself as what it really is -- authoritarian and vicious. For example, the sit ins in Nashville in 1960 didn't desegregate the public accomodations or facilties. It was the boycott that did it, and the boycott was provoked by the REACTION to the sit ins. NVR engaged the community to participate and the tacticians of that movement made sure that their were many different ways in which people could participate, depending on their abilities and temperaments.

A New Beginning

Hello,

This is an experiment to see if there are people out there who want to share with us their experiences, ideas, opinions about liberation education. We at the SF Freedom School, hopefully, are part of a development that is helping promote the next social movement in this country. We study Civil Rights History as a means to learn the lessons of movement building. Perhaps this blog can be one of many means to develop a better understanding of what we need to know and do in order to:
--stop global warming
--provide health care, affordable housing, living wages and community driven/fully funded education for everyone.

please contribute to the conversation.
www.educationanddemocracy.org